Archers of Loaf go on tour for the weekend, else the boss is gonna be maaaad

Like a beer-soaked grime monster rising up from the corner of your favorite dive, Archers of Loaf are back! Don’t worry, they’re a friendly beer-soaked monster. Take a picture with your buddy! In actuality, the grimemonsters Archers of Loaf have been back for a little while. The 90’s indie-rock legends made a triumphant (in their own dirt-stained, scruffy way) return last year, playing a string of dates across the nation. Now, their four records are in the process of being reissued by their fellow North Carolinians at Merge Records. Reissues of Icky Mettle and Vee Vee are already out, while the gussied-up versions of All the Nation’s Airports and White Trash Heroes are due on August 7 in colored vinyl, double-CD, and digital download formats. If you have to look at something besides record sleeves, the Gorman Bechard’s Archers of Loaf concert documentary What Did You Expect? will be screening in select cities on select dates soon. Look at those dates down there, lower on the page.

To capitalize on all this “Hey, Archers of Loaf are back!” momentum, the band will be doing some touring this summer. Since presumably everybody in the band has day jobs (except for Eric “Wild Man” Bachmann, cause he’s a wild man), these dates are all on the weekend. That’s good news for you if you, too, have a day job! That’s bad news for you if you’re a weirdo who only likes going to concerts on weekdays or something? Get a job, weirdo.

Mount Kimbie, they’re so young and beautiful. Their cheeks are rosy red, their mouths are filled with the rainbow of youth, their brains are filled with wonder. When they took their Play-Doh and made their debut album Crooks & Lovers (TMT Review) back in 2010, we all looked at them like they were the cutest electronic kids in the world. And you know why we did that? Because they were, damn it! Name a cuter tiny electronic child in the world. Don’t. Don’t do that. I will cease you.

Everybody’s gotta grow up, though. For people, that involves gross hair and bleeding and all the feelings in the world. For electronic acts, it means signing to Warp Records. And with that in mind, it looks like our little buds in Mount Kimbie are growing up. Oh, the tears. They’re signed to the label and with that, they’re going to release… something. Warp’s press release says they’re working on their first release for the label, but provides no further information. I bet it’ll be just great, though! So proud of our boys.

As if fans of garage rock weren’t already over the moon about all the recent announcements from Thee Oh Sees, now there’s something else to grin about: The Fresh & Onlys have a new album called Long Slow Dance coming out September 4 on Mexican Summer, they’ve just released the first single, and they’ve got an initial string of shows lined up. Christmas in June, amirite???

Produced by Phil Manley, who’s worked with the likes of Barn Owl, Moon Duo, Psychic Reality, and Wooden Shjips, Long Slow Dance will follow last year’s Secret Walls EP and 2010’s LP, Playing it Strange (TMT Review). Word on the street says the San Francisco group has incorporated some classical touches à la Ennio Morricone and that the album contains “a sprawling selection of stoner-anthems.” Rad.

Stream the first single, “Yes or No,” and check out the tourdates below to see if they’ll be paying your city a visit.

From across many nations, generations, and genres they came, all united in a common love. Brave men and women grasp hands across the divide of arbitrary coolness to stand tall and say as one, “I don’t care if you don’t think they’re punk rock! Nor if my mom — and classic rock/adult contemporary stations with names like 88.1 The Fox or 98.4 The Bear or 102.5 The Honeybadger — love them! Fleetwood Mac wrote some of the greatest rock songs of the 1970s and I’m proud to say that I’m a Mac fan!” Because it’s hard out there sometimes for a Mac fan of a certain musical persuasion. Either the punk rock bartender at your usual waterin’ hole is shaking his head at you for picking “Rhiannon” on the jukebox, or you’re about to drown in pastel velour and middle-aged women in shitty capes at the Ren Fest. But my Rhiannon-loving friends, take heart! There’s a place for us now. And by “place” I mean indie-skewing Fleetwood Mac tribute compilation.

The songs of Buckingham, Nicks, McVie, and co. get a makeover on Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute to Fleetwood Mac, a new comp from Hear Music/Concord due August 14. Have you ever wondered what the Mac would sound like with Washed Out’s chillwave gloss? Under Lykke Li’s Scandinavian pop lens? With a Lee Ranaldo avant-garde twist? Under Best Coast’s sweet, lo-fi surgical knife? Well, respected film and TV music supervisor Randall Poster along with Gelya Robb (the team that put together last year’s Grammy-nominated Rave On Buddy Holly comp) have asked some of indie music’s leading names to take classic Fleetwood Mac tracks from the band’s entire 45-year career and give them a new spin. Poster, who has worked with Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, and Todd Haynes (and many many more!), describes how “the story of Fleetwood Mac has always intrigued me. And we’ve tried to tell that story through the arc of music we’ve recorded. Working with some of our favorite artists and performers, the magical musical legacy of Fleetwood Mac shows itself to be alive and well.” So there you have it, my fellow Fleetwood Mac fans. All your dreams of Bethany Cosentino crooning about Welsh witches are crystal visions no more. They’re real. So stand tall and stand proud and Just Tell Me That You Want Me.

So yeah, the new book isn’t called The Evolution of Tape Hiss, even though that is totally what I would call it. However, there is a new book, written by Mark Baumgarten, that documents the history of Olympia, Washington’s K Records.

Love Rock Revolution: K Records and the Rise of Independent Music will be released by Sasquatch Books on July 10 and examines and elucidates on the history of K Records, which, if you don’t know, is a really cool, really influential record label that indie kids, nerds, lo-fi fanatics, art schoolers, and that cute girl in glasses that you always see at the record store totally love. It was co-founded by Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson, is dedicated to “exploding the teenage underground into passionate revolt against the corporate ogre,” and has released records by Beck, Modest Mouse, The Microphones, Mirah, Built To Spill, The Gossip, Shonen Knife, and, of course, Beat Happening.

The book itself features interviews with “many players from the 1980s and 1990s indie underground,” both those directly involved in K Records and those who watched as fans, and comes (digitally) packaged with its own soundtrack. The (digitally) included album is not a “best of” but rather a sonic document attempting to “capture the story and spirit of K Records with a broad range of musical styles,” and will be available for download on the author’s website from July 10 through July 17; see the tracklist below.